CHAPTER XXIV
FAILURE IN HEALTH. LETTER TO HIS CO-OPERATORS. SEMINARY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS
Don Bosco's health and strength had been slowly but perceptibly lessening for some years. A celebrated consulting physician, after a careful examination during his prolonged illness of 1884, had said of him: "Marvelous actions are reported of Don Bosco; but to me the greatest miracle is that, exhausted as he is, he is still alive."
Exhaustion! is there anything that holds pain in solution with more acute and relentless power? But the heroic sufferer was never heard to complain; his wan face, his weakened limbs, his bowed shoulders, told the story to his brethren and friends. Yet he never succumbed to weakness. Retaining to the last the direction of the Society, his solicitude for its spiritual and temporal well-being never flagged, nor his superhuman wisdom in forming projects and laying out plans for the individual and collective good of the three Salesian Orders and their world-wide charges.
The saintly founder's last long and zealous letter "To his Beloved Co-operators," contains a summary of all the year's work for the glory of God effected by the Salesian laborers. Several new
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